Monday, July 25, 2005

The Bartonian Extinction and other news

Exxon, Shell, BP Profits (...) Amid Record Oil PricesExxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc the world's three biggest publicly traded oil companies, will probably report record second-quarter profits because of surging oil and gas prices, analyst surveys showed....Most of the increase in profit is coming from higher prices, rather than rising oil and gas production, according to Credit Suisse First Boston analysts including Edward Westlake.

Summary -- you can print dollars. You cannot print oil. Another feather in the cap for all those gloomyprognosticators. That and two cents will get you a cuppa joe.

How To Do Decentralized EnergyCue Greenpeace ... Greenpeace UK, to be precise. The organization has just released a massive (~75 page) report entitled Decentralising Power: An Energy Revolution For The 21st Century, looking at what it would take to move the UK aggressively towards a distributed power network.

Good stuff. WorldChanging and Greenpeace, keeping their eye on the ball. The cornerstone of surviving our Long Emergency as a civilization and not a rabble is awareness of the alternatives to our present cracked out "solution" to life. The report is targeted at global warming mitigation -- works on that level and as a solution for Peak Energy.

A Bridge Just Far EnoughIf you want an example of what sets greater Vancouver apart from the cities south of the US-Canadian border, look no farther than this Vancouver Sun headline: Council votes to turn two of six lanes on Burrard Bridge into dedicated bike lanes.Just for context -- the Burrard Bridge is one of just a few main access points to downtown Vancouver, and carries a significant amount of car traffic into downtown from some of the western neighborhoods. Vancouver tried a similar experiment in the mid-1990s, but it ended after just a week or so because of a public outcry over congestion. The same thing may well happen again.

All the fat butts will scream about this one. Pedal faster -- like a Cuban. See how you're whipping past all the cars idling in the lane next to you? See how you can now cancel your club membership -- the one you don't use anyways? I'll keep an eye on the screams of pain from the car set up North. I resemble that remark.

What Can the Permian Teach Us?But then the temperature shot up another five to ten degrees very quickly and huge amounts of carbon-12 were fixed into the rock suggesting a sudden injection of carbon into the air......it all came together in a eureka type moment in the mind of offshore drilling expert and geologist Gerry Dickens. Methane hydrate was a curious new substance found recently in the deep ocean. At high pressure and low temperature it existed as a stable clathrate looking like bands and chunks of yellowish ice threaded into the ocean formations. (...) (T)he hydrate it turned out would convert to gas rather suddenly if the temperature rose just a few degrees, releasing methane gas rich in carbon-12.

DarkSyde rides in with another GREAT essay on a topic which in lesser hands would cause ones brain to glaze over. For me, I'm always complaining about them curious chimps at the DOE, chipping away at the hydrates, and now I gots another bullet for my gun. The Permian was an incredible Die-Off some years back that killed of everything on Earth. (Almost.) Western civilization and Joe Barton are trying to replicate it. The Bartonian. Has a nice ring to it.

Price hike enrages publicIn Sana’a, the riot, pull(ed) together people from different classes ... Similar demonstrations accompanied by public chaos and destruction of government and private properties took place at the same time ... The police opened fire in the air and used tear gas to disperse the wrathful protestors who committed acts of vandalism, destroying both public and private properties, mainly in the capital city of Sana’a.